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Trysa Shulman's avatar

I just came across your Substack today and this was the note I wrote myself yesterday: Pragmatic & Integrative Eclecticism in Psychotherapy

Using the right emotional and psychotherapeutic skills and techniques at the right time for the client’s immediate and long term needs.

Traumatic NS dysregulation - needs NS regulation techninques

Existential issues - need values clarification, a sense of meaning and purpose, an identity based on meaningful and sustainable agency in one’s own life

Anxiety based on avoidance — needs approach to what is being avoided, and to build tolerance for feeling, and competency in processing challenging material

Anxiety based on uncertainty — needs to develop a capacity to tolerate uncertainty, to form constructs of meaning around uncertainty

I appreciate the three ways of practicing eclectic therapy that you lay out. I find my choice of therapeutic modality to be not diagnosis dependent, but rather mainly dependent on the particular underlying issue that we are addressing in a given therapy session. (I tend to use IFS, DBT, polyvagal theory, existential therapy)

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Eleanor Cummins's avatar

Love this! Thank you for sharing, Trysa. I knew there were more paths I hadn't yet articulated!

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A. Smith's avatar

You said, "I’m extensively trained in DBT, considered a gold standard treatment for BPD."

This is a lie. DBT is not a "gold standard." The literature states that is is no better than literally *anything else.*

DBT is abuse. If you practice DBT, then you are an abuser.

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